An LDS view on the Bible and other Holy Scriptures

Job 17-18

Job directs a complaint both towards earth and towards heaven. Job continued his same sense of defeat and brokenness as described in the previous chapter.

“Are there not mockets with me?” (Job 17:2) Instead of getting support from his friends, they tear him down and tell him that everything that has happened to him, is because of his own sin.

Job felt that not only were his friends against him, but that heaven was against him. Here he pleads for an agreement of peace between himself and heaven.

One day the body returns to dust, job shows his lack of hope.

Chapter 18: The wicked know not God

Bildad continued to trade insults with Job. They accused each other of being dense and stupid as beasts.

Bildad felt that Job wanted to overturn unchangeable laws of life; mainly the laws of cause and effect that tell us Job has caused his own crisis by his sin and refusal to repent.

Bildad wanted to teach Job about the life and fate of the wicked, and in doing so he hoped that Job would get the idea that he was among the wicked that Bildad described. The wicked man was someone weak in his steps, unable or unwilling to continue the journey of life. He felt this accurately described Job and set him among the wicked men. Bildad takes previous statements of Job and turns them back upon him. Job spoke in his previous speech about how he felt attacked and assaulted by God on every side (Job 16:9-14). Bildad regarded this as proof of Job’s wickedness.